


Coming Home

by MakeAStriderSmile



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Davekat Week, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sadstuck, Ugh I hate this one but I can't be bothered writing a better one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 03:31:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4731281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakeAStriderSmile/pseuds/MakeAStriderSmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your regular cliche sadstuck: Dave's out of the juju and drama ensues.</p>
<p>I don't have a good summary for this, it's just balls is what it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh, this is my least favorite of all of my written fics (Davekat or otherwise)
> 
> Hope someone likes my shitty writing for Sadstuck day.

“Dave Strider, I swear to every fucking deity that exists in this godforsaken universe, including myself, that if you ever do this again, I will personally decapitate you with my sickles and mount your stupid fucking head on the tallest spire of the tallest god damn tower. Do you fucking hear me?” Karkat Vantas is crying, his words coming out choked and harsh through his tears.

“Heh. I… I wasn’t ever planning on going back into that thing. I don’t even think I can. None of us can. We’re… safe. For now. I think.” Dave’s voice is hoarse, though from disuse more than tears. He won’t allow himself to cry, not now. Not here, where anyone could see. He wouldn’t care if it was just him and Karkat. But… the others couldn’t see him like that.

“No, shitstain, you don’t fucking think. You never fucking think and that’s the problem! Don’t you even understand what could have happened to you?! You could have died, you could have blinked out of existence, I would have never seen you again! You can’t do that to me, Strider, not ever again. You left me here, Dave. You left me. You promised me you wouldn’t.” His words can continue no further, dissolving into a harsh, wet noise as he settles for burying his face in his hands, turning away from Dave, who is, despite his best efforts, tearing up the slightest bit. Shit. Stupid fucking emotions.

“Karkat. Babe. I didn’t have a god damn choice, and you know it. It’s not like I could have just opted the fuck out and flown back to cuddle like, ‘Sup, I just left all of my friends to get locked in a fucking house thing. What’s for dinner?” I couldn’t leave them. It was my fate to be stuck in there, and yours to wait for me.” He pauses. “You… you did, right?” he asks, tentatively, very tentatively. He knows that, as great as he pretends to be, he was never prime boyfriend material as it was. He didn’t understand quadrants, or Karkat’s need to fill them like ticks off of a stupid fucking list. He had never wanted to be just a quarter of Karkat’s affections, but had resigned himself to it over time. But… things were different now. He didn’t know how long he’d been in the house juju. Karkat could have easily found someone else in the time that he had been… away.

“Does it even matter?” Karkat rasps out tiredly.

“Of course it matters, Karkat! Why the fuck wouldn’t it matter to me? The whole godawful time I was trapped in that thing, the only thing that kept me going, kept me sane, was that if I ever got out, if I ever got free of that terrible thing, you’d be on the other side of it, and I could just forget about everything I’d seen, everything I’d done, and go back and pretend with you like we always did. If you’re over it, just tell me you’re over it, but don’t beat around the fucking bush to spare my feelings. Don’t even bother. I don’t need the sympathy, I don’t need your platitudes.” Dave shouts, his voice cracking toward the end. The others look over at them, though they had been offering them privacy before, clearly surprised at Dave’s sudden lapse in chill. He was a little surprised himself. Even Karkat looked surprised, teary eyes wide, the red tinged tears staining the grey of his skin.

And then Karkat just looked tired and sad, and Dave stood up quickly, face blank and hard. “Actually, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’ll just… leave you be. Don’t worry. I’ll… I’ll be leaving now.”

He gives him one last lingering look, giving away nothing, no emotion, no sign that he regretted it, or even cared. Just the stoicism he had relied on so much as a child, and as a teenager. If nothing else, Bro had taught him that particular skill very well.

And then he turns, waving and croaking out a quiet goodbye to the group. Protests are automatically made. ‘But, Dave, what if we need you?’ ‘Dave, you can’t just run off like this!’ ‘Please, just stay here, you two don’t even have to talk, just… don’t go.’

But he shrugs them all off, smiling weakly. “It’s best for everyone. Trust me. You won’t even miss me.”

And with that, off he goes, just a red streak in the night. A flash, a scratch of two turntables, and he’s gone. Gone, to a happier time, before all of the nonsense, before Karkat’s stammered confession and soft kisses in the depths of the meteor, before movie nights on the couch and movie choices that Dave groaned at every time but never turned off, before he even knew that he could feel anything for that poor soul with the little horns.

They all waited patiently for him to come back, so determined that it was just a stage of grieving, that he’d have to come back to close his time loop, that he would realize that he really did love Karkat and didn’t want to lose him.

Karkat didn’t have those hopes. He had been looking at Dave, and he had seen through those impassive shades, and through to those eyes, full of hurt, and pain, and so much time spent alone with nothing but time and his memories. He knew that, even if Dave came back, he wouldn’t be the same Dave he had confessed to, the same Dave he had fallen for slowly over the course of a sweep and a half. He’d come back broken and sad, barely even a shell of the boy that he had loved.

Time went on. Nearly a full year. Dirk had searched for Dave. Roxy had tried to pull him out of thin air. Literally. Jade channelled her space powers, searching for him. She couldn’t find him at any point in their universe. Not in their time anyway. She assumed he was just hiding from her. Sneaky bastard.

Nobody could find anything, until one day, Rose decided she would channel her inner Seer. She disappeared into her room one day, and did not emerge for nearly two more. Her eyes were tired, but there was a smile on her lips, soft and barely there. She makes a beeline for Karkat, standing in front of him and asking him with an arched brow, “Do you love my brother, Mr. Vantas?”

“Yes.” Karkat answers without a second of hesitation, then asks confusedly, “Why does it even matter? He left. He’s not coming back, he won’t want anything to do with me. Even if he did decide to come back to you all, he’d just pretend I don’t exist or something. I couldn’t live with that. Just let Strider stay gone.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t want to. Perhaps he was waiting on your cue. “ She shrugs, wiggling her brows enigmatically and smirking, though the smirk is kind of unlike her. “Perhaps, if you go to your room and wish real hard, a fairy might just pop on in and say howdy.” The word choice is just so peculiar for Rose Lalonde, the mistress of vocabulary, that, Karkat, despite himself, feels the slightest bit of hope well up inside him, for the first time in months. He just nods in acknowledgement, running to his room.

“Well, brother, was that enough confirmation for you?” Rose asks, looking up to where Dave has been perched on the rafters for the past ten minutes.

“All I needed was the yes or no, Rose, but thanks. Nice to see your mind reading trick still works just as well. I didn’t think you’d actually say it, to be honest.”

“Oh, big brother, you’ll find that I’m always full of surprises.” With that, she winks, and retreats back into her room to sleep for at least a week.

Meanwhile, Karkat is in his room, clutching his pillow tightly, eyes closed, heart and mind fixed on a particular blond prick in shades and a fetching shade of red.

The bed dips a little under a newly added weight, and lanky, strong arms wind around a troll clad in a baggy sweater. Karkat doesn’t dare open his eyes, just cuddling against the chest in front of him, tossing the pillow away and clutching the weight beside him as if it could vanish if he didn’t hold it tighter. Which it could, to be honest.

“Heard you were lookin’ for a fairy, Kittykat.” A soft, slightly accented voice purrs into his ear. “Well, here I am, ready to grant some wishes. Mind you, I can only do so much. Just say the word and I’ll do what I can.”

“I wish for you to shut the fuck up and kiss me, you absolute dickmongering assho-“ Karkat snarls before his words are cut off by a pair of lips that he would recognize anywhere.

No more is said for a while. A very long while. Just soft breaths, harsher ones, small noises and loud noises, sobbing and laughing. And then, they are breaking apart, and Karkat’s eyes open, finally.

Dave is smiling at him tremulously, shades off, eyes like blood in full view, shiny with tears that he doesn’t dare shed. “Well, that was one hell of a welcome back, beautiful. Thanks for the treat.” He murmurs.

“You fucking prick. You left again, I should be killing you right now.” But then he tackles Dave, kissing all over his face harshly. “I just.. I fucking missed you, and I wouldn’t ever do it, even if I wanted to, and I missed you so fucking much, please don’t ever go off like that, I was so scared that you’d never come back again. I thought it was going to be just like before and I thought you would hate me forever.” He sobs into his neck, clinging to him with the ferocity of a kitten to its mother.

“Hey, no, honey, don’t cry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for leaving, I was just.. fucking dumb. I was so fucking stupid, and I thought you didn’t need me anymore, I thought I wasn’t good for you after all of that fucking time spent in there. But.. I spent some time in the past without you, and I just knew that I was never going to be able to love anyone as much as I love you, Karkat.” Dave chokes out, stroking Karkat’s back and holding him back just as tightly, arm wrapped tightly around his waist, never wanting to move from this spot.

“I love you too, you absolute fucking ignoramus. I love you and I promise, this time, if you leave me for longer than a fucking hour, I will have Kanaya very slowly saw you in two. Vertically. Don’t think I won’t get her to do it, because I will, and she will happily go along with it. And it will be fucking just, too, so don’t think about coming back from it.” Karkat purrs contently, a serene smile on his face even as Dave’s goes a little pale.

“Got it. No more leaving. 24/7 Karkat time. That works.”

“I wasn’t giving you another choice, you will stick around whether you want to or not.”  

“Duly noted, sweetheart. Now, have we got any apple juice here? Because I haven’t had any in like, 7 sweeps, and that is just not right on any level. I’m missin’ my sweet nectar and I want to have apple juice kisses.”

“Your apple juice kisses are gross and I hate drinking the stuff. But…. There’s a bottle in the thermal hull.” Grey skin flushes red. “It was just in case you came home.”

“Aw, honey, of course I was coming home. Was there ever any doubt in your mind?”

“All the time.”

“Well, stop that.  Anywhere you are is the only place I want to be. I know that now.”

“Damn straight. Uh…. Same goes for you. I mean… I don’t want to be without you.”

“You don’t need to quote your romcoms to me or anything, babe, I already love you to bits without you spitting Dane Cook at me.”

“Oh, my God, you still haven’t gotten over it yet. Ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“No, you are.”

“Your face is.”

“My face is great.”

“It really is, sweetpea.”

“Are you going to do that all the time now?” the troll asks bashfully.

“Yes. Got a problem with my pet names, pumpkin?” Dave asks, raising his brows.

“…No. I don’t.”

 

 


End file.
